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Crawley news

Billings was arrested at the address where he had been living in Vinkeveen in the Netherlands on July 25 last year on a European Arrest Warrant, and his extradition was authorised by the District Court of Amsterdam on September 26. He was extradited on October 5.

Andrew Billings has been jailed for 12 years (Image: Sussex Police)

On August 31, 2017 at Lewes Crown Court, Nicholas Barbary, 29, unemployed, of Walesbeech, in Furnace green, Crawley, and Mark Maynard, 30, self-employed, of New England Road, Haywards Heath both pleaded guilty to importing, and possessing with intent to endanger life, a self-loading Walther P38 pistol, and two reactivated Czechoslovakian Skorpion sub-machine-guns, and ammunition.

All the weapons were fully loaded, and Barbary was jailed for 12 years and Maynard was sentenced to 16 years and two months imprisonment.

Mark Maynard was jailed for 16 years and two months (Image: Sussex Police)

On January 17 last year the pair had been arrested by officers from the Sussex Police Serious Organised Crime Unit when their hire van was stopped by armed officers on the off-slip road at junction 10 of the M23 southbound in Crawley.

The weapons were found, wrapped in black plastic tape, attached to the underside of the van by magnets. The package contained a further 157 rounds of ammunition.

The pistol had two magazines, one of which was loaded into the weapon and contained six rounds of 9mm ammunition. The spare magazine contained seven rounds.

Nicholas Barbary was jailed for 12 years (Image: Sussex Police)

One of the machine guns contained a loaded magazine with 16 rounds of 32 ammunition. The other Skorpion did not contain a magazine, but there was an unloaded spare magazine which would fit either of them.

There were also a further 150 rounds of 32 ammunition in three boxes for the Skorpions, as well as a sound suppressor which is capable of fitting those weapons.

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Detective Sergeant Paul Graham, of Sussex Police, said; "All these arrests followed our intelligence-led investigation, which showed that the trio were responsible for these weapons, ammunition and related material coming into the UK, and for their collection once here.

One of the packaged attached to the van (Image: Sussex Police)

"We have not yet established exactly what was planned or where the weapons were to be moved to once they arrived in the UK, and our enquiries continue, but they were clearly intended for criminal use in or around Sussex.

"On January 17 we had followed Maynard and Barbary from Crawley to a coach park in Coventry, where they retrieved a package attached by magnets to the underside of a coach that had returned the previous day from a routine tourist trip to Belgium and attached it to the underside of their van.

"We followed and stopped them when they came back to Sussex.

"The package had been attached to the coach without the knowledge of the coach operators or the passengers.

"It became clear that Barbary travelled to the Netherlands via Belgium earlier that month, collected the firearms from Billings, and attached them to the underside of the coach.

All of the weapons and ammunition seized by police (Image: Sussex Police)

"He then returned to the UK, ready to go to Coventry with Maynard.

"Clearly these weapons posed a real threat to people in Sussex and elsewhere, whether engaged in crime or law-abiding. But we were able, working with law enforcement partners in the UK and abroad, to prevent them reaching the streets and causing injury or death."

There was no evidence of any terrorist connection or motive in this case, Sussex Police has said.